Week 1 Reflection

There are a few things that stand out to me in looking back at the past week. The first has to do with the complexity in terminology. I didn't realize how extensive and detailed the vernacular is. I have decided that I am going to make myself a cheat sheet to keep it all straight! Given everything we've read and the discussions that we've had, I see how critical and challenging it is to be on the same page.

One topic that has come up a lot this week is communication both online and off, and the affordances and challenges of each. Last semester in Social Aspects of Internet Communication Technology we read a paper by Joseph Walther called Computer Mediated Communication. I had to go back and look at it again, my recollection was that there were many relevant points in the paper. One thing Walther discusses is that groups who had an expectation of long term relationships, like a long term group project, drove more personal, friendly relationships. I noticed that in the margins I wrote - consider this article when thinking about online learning and student/teacher relationships.

I read Christensens' book Disrupting Class last summer, and I liked it a lot. I found it inspiring. It's exciting to think that we're on the cusp of a new frontier in education. I realize, however, that what I imagined when I thought of this new future doesn't necessarily match what is taking root. I remember talking to a woman who ran the website division for a large marketing agency in Connecticut about five years ago. She said that back when tv was new to the market, it was essentially used to "do radio on the tv" and that what we were seeing is people "doing tv on the internet." I hope to see a future where we don't just perpetuate the way education has existed, but instead innovate and discover new approaches to learning and teaching.

There were some interesting projects I read about last semester in Cognition and Computers. One was a project called Archaeotype that Professors Black and McClintock researched at the Dalton School. It is a blended learning method where students working in groups learn about ancient Greece by digging up artifacts in a virtual dig. The students then research the artifacts both online in Archaeotype and in museums and had to form a hypothesis about the object. The group then presents their hypothesis to the rest of the class and had to defend their thinking. Another was River City where students worked collaboratively to solve the mystery of why people are dying in the town by conducting interviews, collecting samples and performing tests in an online lab. These projects are new, innovative approaches to education where students learn the subject matter and new skills, and are engaged in critical thinking and working collaboratively - all things they'll need to be able to do once they leave school.

I'm a staunch advocate of disruptive innovation and I'd love to see a game changer. I'd love even more to be a part of it!

About me

I am in the Instructional Technology and Media program, this is my second semester. I also work full time at Gartner, which is an IT research company in Connecticut. I am a web usage analyst, I help our business units evaluate and assess the effectiveness of our websites and make product development decisions based on usage metrics, usability studies and surveys. Previously I was a producer at Gartner and was responsible for working with the business owners, designers and developers to build new site sections and features.

My interests lie in taking my producer/web analytics/user experience skills and applying them to the development of educational software. I'm very passionate about the idea of developing new learning environments that give educational self determinism back to students to make them feel empowered. This class appealed to me because I wanted to get deep understanding of what software is being used in the marketplace today, how it is being used, and the benefits and shortcomings of each.

I have taken some online course, mainly training courses through Gartner, which have been fairly static. Watch a video, click to the next screen and answer some questions. Very dry stuff. I've "taken" courses on Academic Earth, which entails watching a video that was recorded of a traditional class. I've used podcasts and webcasts and interactive meetings. This is the first online class at TC I've taken, and the first of this style with weekly assignments and interactions. This semester I am also taking Cognition and Learning online and I'm anxious to see how the structure of these two courses are similar or differ.

Recently I started using Rosetta Stone software. My grandfather used to teach me Italian when I was a kid. In junior high and high school I took three years of Spanish and in high school and college I took three years of Italian. With all that time I'm still not conversational in either language. I've always wanted to be able to speak Italian fluently, so I finally took the dive and got Rosetta Stone. It's a really interesting approach they use, it's very intuitive and they manage to teach concepts like masculine and feminine words and singular and plural words almost by example instead of telling or explaining. I like it a lot and I think it's very clever how they've set it up. But what really floored me was what happened when my kids each started using it. I waited in the wings expecting that they would ask for help and have questions. I thought the software was intuitive to me because of the background I already had, but to my surprise, it appeared that it was just as intuitive for my kids. At eight and nine, they've had some exposure to Italian, but nothing formal or comprehensive. Nevertheless, they're doing wonderfully! Who knows, by the time we get back to Italy over the summer, maybe we'll all be fluent!

In addition to working on my Italian, I'm trying to remember to put my researcher hat on and observe how my kids interact with the software and make note of strengths and weaknesses. I'll share any interesting discoveries I come upon.